Day 1- Aug. 2
For our trip this year, the girls decided they wanted to see where I grew up and see the Oregon coast. It was fun seeing the places I was familiar with and also places I never saw, even though I lived there!
Kari, Lisa and I all flew out of Mesa/Gateway airport at 6:10am, which is 5 minutes from Lisa's house in Queen Creek, into Eugene, OR. I was already in Mesa at my folks house, but Kari had to drive from Flagstaff. Tami got the worst end of the deal. She had to fly out of Las Vegas after taking an hour shuttle from St. George and the only flight to Eugene was on Friday, 2 days before ours. She rented a car, stayed in a VRBO, went on some great hikes and saw lots of things around Eugene before we got there. She picked us up at the airport at 8:45am.
We didn't feel like eating breakfast yet, so we headed to the coast on Hwy 26 to Florence, OR. It was a little foggy and cool, but we ate outside at a cute little place.
Then it was on to Sea Lion Caves. We spent a couple of hours here. I'd forgotten how bad it smells down in the caves, but really cool seeing hundreds of sea lions, inside the caves and outside on the rocks.
It was really foggy, but when it finally cleared up, we could see the Heceta Lighthouse.
Heceta
Head Light is a lighthouse on the Oregon Coast. Built in 1894, the 56-foot-tall
lighthouse shines a beam visible for 21 nautical miles, making it the
strongest light on the Oregon Coast.
Next stop was Yachats, OR where we saw Thor's Well. Its a deep hole where the sea rises and falls and when its high tide the water will spray upwards! Really mesmerizing to watch! Devils Churn was a powerful inlet of water. Both really cool! 
Lots of beautiful bridges along the Oregon coast.
We stopped next at Newport, OR. Its a town of about 10,000 people, but gets to about 40,000 in the summer months. This is where we hiked for miles to see the Yaquina Lighthouse. We had to walk into the park because we couldn't drive our cars in because of Covid? It was a beautiful walk, lots of wild flowers, sea views and ocean breezes. the lighthouse was closed, so we saw it from a distance.
Everywhere we walked there was blackberry bushes, and some of them are getting ripe! 
Neskowin was the next town up the coast. Here we walked to the beach to find the "Ghost Forest". Old stumps of dead trees can be seen at low tide, but we missed low tide so we only saw a few trees.I remember Mom growing these kind of flowers, Nasturtiums. They are colorful and edible! The blue hydrangea's also grow everywhere along the coast!
We were all getting hungry so we ate at a little diner in Neskowin that had really yummy food. I had the fish tacos with a salad.
From Florence to Tillamook is only about 120 miles which is about a 2-3 hour drive, but stopping along the way to see all the sites takes a lot of time. We didn't reach Oceanside and our VRBO beach house until 9:30pm! We were all so tired, we'd been up since 4:15am, had a 2 hour plane ride and lots of walking, so we all crashed!
